


Time Spent Watching

by Birdbitch



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-02-26
Packaged: 2018-02-04 16:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1786222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Birdbitch/pseuds/Birdbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He feels like he's always watching.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Spent Watching

He spends a lot of the meeting watching Enjolras talk. It isn’t just watching, of course—he doodles, draws little profiles of the man in his notebook, tries to remember each curve of his face, of his neck, the lines of his body—but in the end, it really is just watching and trying to call it anything else would be to fool himself. He drinks, of course, from a metal flask that nobody has ever bothered checking, despite the campus’s zero-tolerance policy regarding alcohol. He listens—that’s the one constant. He’s always listening to Enjolras, even when he tries to feign disinterest or says rude things from the back of the room. Enjolras is the only reason he’s really there. He’s a skeptic, doesn’t believe in God or people or the promise of the future, but Enjolras does—well, perhaps not God—and he does so whole heartedly in such a way that Grantaire wishes that that heart would just focus on him. It’s that passion that he’s in love with. He loves the way Enjolras speaks with such conviction and wonders if maybe sometime he could ever find a way to believe just as strongly.

Jehan laughs at him, of course. Jehan, who spends all of his time writing poetry about love, calls Grantaire a lovesick fool. Not meanly—that’s not Jehan’s way, of course, he’d never be as scathing as someone like Enjolras or Grantaire himself—but he says it nonetheless and pats Grantaire’s head. “Did you ever think he might reciprocate?”

“Why would anyone like him ever be interested in someone like me?” And that was that on the subject.

Even still, Grantaire is there and he sits in the back of the room and watches and listens to Enjolras speak of revolution, of absolute hope in the future, and it’s almost enough to give him enough hope himself.

—

“Don’t expect me to go soft,” Enjolras says after being kissed, and Grantaire shakes his head.

“If you did, you wouldn’t be you,” he says in response. The others should be coming back to the suite soon—or at least they would, if Grantaire wasn’t sure Combeferre didn’t manufacture this whole event just so that he and Enjolras would make up. Enjolras is still in a weak state—it’s unfamiliar and frightening to see him tremble and even cry, but at the same time, it just as well proves him human, and in the end, it’s never any fun loving a statue. He hiccups, curls his fingers into the back of Grantaire’s jacket and hides his face in his neck. Grantaire wonders if anybody else has ever seen the fearless leader like this before, and the only people he can think of are the man’s mother—who must act just as cold and stone-faced as her son—and Combeferre, who has been Enjolras’s best friend for as long as anybody can remember. Maybe Courfeyrac, but even that’s a stretch. He soothes his hand in circles against Enjolras’s back and wonders how they’re still standing.

“I don’t understand why me,” Enjolras whispers. One would think he didn’t have countless other students looking up to him on a daily basis, that he didn’t know how to lead and command attention. People generally love Enjolras. The self-consciousness is something that unsettles Grantaire, though he supposes he could see where it comes from. Just because someone acts confident doesn’t necessarily mean they are.

“Why shouldn’t I?” It’s not something Enjolras wants to answer, and Grantaire’s not sure he wants to hear any response, anyways.

Once he’s decided they’ve stood together long enough, Enjolras pulls back. Despite the fact that anybody looking at him could tell he had been crying, he finally looks like himself again. Unrelenting. Strong. A million different things that Grantaire could only describe if he was using images. Enjolras rubs at his face and folds his arms over his chest, shut off again, and that kills Grantaire, it really does, because of all the things that have just happened and he’s just able to lock him out again. But Grantaire figures there’s nothing he can do about it, not right now. Maybe someday, but it’s just a part of Enjolras’s nature. For all that he is caring, he hates to have anyone do the same for him.

“Do you have any other classes today?”

“One.”

Enjolras turns his head away. “You should go to it then. I’ll be fine here.”

“I can miss one class.”

“I’m not that important.”

Grantaire wants to shout at him that he is, that he’s the center of his universe and that nothing will ever be as important as him again so long as he lives, but it’s not the kind of thing you can say unless you’re Jehan and you can say it in a beautiful way. Grantaire has never been good with words.

“I promised I’d stay. Will you let me?”

He can see the cogs working in Enjolras’s head, weighing the risks of letting Grantaire stay versus making him go, wondering if Grantaire would really ever put up with more of his shit—which he would, doubtlessly to anyone but Enjolras apparently—or if he’d be too fed up with all of this to ever come back—unfortunately, Grantaire’s not that easy to get rid of. Even when he thought Enjolras hated him, he didn’t leave. Why would he now?

Finally, Enjolras lets his arms drop to his sides and nods. “You should take your shoes off.”

“Will Feuilly or Joly mind?”

He shakes his head. “They’re as much your friends as they are mine,” he answers.

They’re silent for a while; Enjolras is drinking the latte Grantaire brought and Grantaire is trying not to freak out. Finally, Enjolras sits down next to him on the couch and reaches to grab his hand. It’s not particularly graceful, but it’s one of the most romantic gestures Enjolras has ever made towards another person. “I’m just tired,” he says finally, and Grantaire looks at him.

“It’s okay to be tired, you know.”

“No, no. I’m not supposed to get tired. I’m supposed to be there to help other people, to do—do great things. I don’t have time to get tired.”

“When I came in, your skin was bright red,” Grantaire says suddenly. “Was that the shower?”

“I—yeah.”

“How often do you do that?”

“It’s stress relief. It’s—” He bites back the words, but it’s there and lingering. It’s like your drinking. It’s like Jehan and the anti-anxiety medications he uses and Joly and his compulsions and—well. They all have self destructive habits, with maybe the exception of Marius, but even then it’s possible. He drops his head. “I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter.” It does, of course. All of these things matter. It’s just that they don’t know how to deal with them, so they ignore them.

“Do you need to go back to sleep?”

“I don’t know. I can’t sleep. I have to do things.”

“You don’t have to do shit.”

“You’re going to make me soft.” Enjolras leans back and closes his eyes. “If I start acting like Marius, make sure Combeferre kills me.” He tilts his head and looks at Grantaire through half-lidded eyes. “It isn’t fair of me to ask, but if I sleep for half an hour, will you wake me up?” And more than anything, it’s obvious that he needs it.

Grantaire nods. “I can’t promise I’ll be awake,” he says, and Enjolras nods. Grantaire moves and kisses him gently on the cheek and Enjolras turns and kisses him.

“You’re the first person I’ve ever kissed,” he says, and before Grantaire can ask him to explain, he’s asleep. Grantaire watches him, sees his mouth hang just slightly open in a way that isn’t ugly but at the same time is so very human, and even more than while they were embracing, Enjolras looks defenseless. His chest rises and falls steadily, though the rest of him remains completely still.

Grantaire falls asleep watching him.

When Combeferre comes back with Joly and Feuilly close behind, he doesn’t wake them up and turns to ask the others not to, either.


End file.
